When I was growing up, at least once or twice a summer my mother
would command my sister and I to toil on the big hill in our backyard,
weeding the dandelions and mustard grass that flourished there. Weeds
must be pulled by the roots or they'll just grow back again. But
perched on the hill with my cardboard box, while the kitchen window
that held my mother's warden eye was so small and distant, and the
earth below was so hard and rocky the weeds were fixed to the ground,
I took the easy way out. I yanked the damn things off at the stem.

Unhappy feelings are a lot like weeds. Neglect to take them up
by the roots and they'll just grow back again. Yet who probes willingly
into the soil where emotions grow? Finding the roots of feeling can
be hard. You might learn this under the gray skies of a Saturn/Moon
transit. If you're like most people, you'll try to ignore your depression.
You'll put on a happy face for loved ones. You'll pretend to be caring,
cool-headed or commanding at work. You'll send energy to your 1st
house image, your 7th house partner, or your 10th house career. But
eventually, inexorably, you'll fall. And the 4th house is where you'll
land.

The 4th is where we go when we collapse. It rules home and family,
ancestors and homeland. It provides a literal retreat. Push ourselves
too hard and we'll likely end up at home, sick in bed. Suffer a devastating
loss and we may knock on the door of a family member and ask to be
taken in. But the 4th is just as much a retreat of the imagination.
It is our psychic hearth. It holds the memories that both comfort
and haunt us. As the base of our chart, it represents both the ground
and mystery of our being. If we lean over the chasm of the 4th, we'll
find, as the poet Rilke wrote, “something dark and like a web,
where a hundred roots are silently drinking.”1

This is not the definition I got from my astrology books. I have
a 4th house Sun. The books said this meant I'd care deeply about
my family. As a child I did, but then most children do. As an adult,
I was never happier than when my family moved a thousand miles away.
Holidays became a spacious new ground. The books said family relationships
would sustain me. I've seen my father twice in twenty years. My sister
has cut me out of her life a dozen times. And now my adventurous
Aries mother is buying a home in Slovakia. When I hear others speak
in gooey tones about how they miss their families, I am an anthropologist
observing an alien culture. I have knowledge of their rituals, but
I don't understand them.

The books said I might cherish my extended family or get into exploring
the family tree. Family celebrations with aunts and uncles and cousins
stopped when I was five. Aunts from both sides of the family have
done extensive genealogies. I've had little curiosity about those
pages full of names. Nor do the old photos of great aunts and grandparents
inspire much connection. When my son was born, I gave him neither
my last name nor his father's. I made one up, something alliterative.
I liked the sound of it - which seemed more interesting than his
carrying the name of ancestors I didn't know.

The books also said with a 4th house Sun, I'd be lucky in real
estate. This was interesting. For years this was my dream. Not that
I wanted to chauffeur Lookey Lous around or hold "open houses" every
weekend. I just wanted to be gifted enough to buy my own home. In
my twenties and thirties, I couldn't walk or drive down a residential
street without feeling pangs of envy. How was it all these people
managed to own homes? Why hadn't I? It seemed an impossible dream.
If it's true the Sun's house identifies your hero's journey, then
perhaps buying a home was mine.

It was definitely a milestone when I bought my first property.
I sold it during a market slump and lost money. On the next home
I made triple what I'd lost before. But my luck seemed more market-based
than astrological. Everybody made and lost money at the same time
I did. Last night a friend called with an urgent investment opportunity. “Rogue
Valley is starting to boom!” he said. “If we pool our
money and buy some rental properties in Grants Pass right now, in
five years we'll be set for life. Really, we should do this!” I
remembered my 4th house Sun. It was tempting. I searched for some
inner confirmation of my destiny as a real estate magnate. There
was no affirming spark.

None of the textbook readings for the 4th house seemed quite right.
I needed to go deeper--back to the basics. The Sun in the 4th house
literally describes a birth near midnight. This was in fact the origin
of the horoscope's angles. With the four angles, the ancient Egyptians
marked the Sun god's daily round. The Ascendant symbolized sunrise
and beginnings; the Midheaven, the Sun's noontime zenith and one's
public success; the Descendant evoked sunset, the descent and dissolving
of the solar self. The angle marking the 4thhouse, the IC, recalled
midnight, a time when the Sun god lay hidden between death and new
life. The IC represented a transformation point, between the old
day and the new.

Whatever your birth time, any planets in the 4th will have this “midnight” reality.
Fourth house territory is what you find when, late at night, you
close your eyes. It's what you encounter when you're all alone in
the dark. Planets here lie beneath your surface. They are as deeply
private as those in the opposite 10th are inescapably public. It's
difficult to talk about 4th house planets with clients. The meanings
are clear enough. Pluto in the 4th suggests a childhood full of hidden
agendas and power struggles. Neptune indicates a family secret that
permeated the air but was never spoken. Saturn suggests a home suffused
with the dynamics of fear and control. You can talk about such histories
with clients. But opening them up and touching them, for they do
live on, is difficult.

Close your eyes now. Who or what is there? That's your 4th house
reality. And that's how I've asked people to enter this house for
years. Your family will be there, in your memories. Your ancestors
will be there, in the rhythmic pulse of your blood. Your home will
be there, as the secure base that allows you to connect with your
innermost self. But you'll discover even greater mysteries. In the
4th you'll find your spirit center, your life source, your inner
country of renewal. There will be times when you need to recreate
yourself - and you'll do this by descending into the 4th house first.
With the Sun in my own 4th house, it's taken me years to learn that
my hero's journey was not so much to buy a home. Rather it was to
learn about creating home and being at home in my world. I've had
to learn this not just once, but many times.

The easiest way to discuss transits or progressions to the 4th
is to start with the literal home. Pluto or Uranus in the solar return
4th is a likely indicator of moving to a new one. Neptune in the
4th may imply plumbing leaks or water damage, the discovery of toxic
substances in the basement - perhaps an infestation of ghosts! Saturn
transiting the natal 4th suggests a period when the house feels cramped
or burdened with family duties and obligations.

What happens in the outer house often mirrors its domestic situation.
Pluto transiting a 4th house planet can inspire both renovations
and marital struggles. Jupiter transiting the 4th can bring a year
of feeling blessed--with a spacious home and an abundance of family
support. Mars in the 4th might bring an intruder, but more typically
it suggests conflict. This is a time when family anger won't be suppressed.

Less easy to articulate, but perhaps more universally true, is
how transits to the 4th are experienced on an inner level. Unwanted
memories may flood to the surface. Dream imagery may be particularly
shrill. Your body may feel exhausted. You might notice a persistent
urge to stay at home with the bedcovers pulled over your head. These
are signs. They're calling you to the task of “homing” -
the cyclic return to oneself.

The homing process is described in rich detail by Clarissa Pinkola
Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves.2 As archetypal template for
this recurring need, she offers “The Seal Maiden,” a
story that appears in various forms across many Northern cultures.
It goes like this: One day a lonely hunter discovers a remarkable
sight--a group of laughing, shimmering, and utterly naked women dancing
on a cliff. They are seal sisters, who have shed their skins to dance
briefly in the topside world, before returning to the sea. The hunter
can't help himself. He steals one of the skins and strikes a bargain
with the hapless seal maiden. If she agrees to be his wife and bear
his child, he'll let her go in seven years.

What can she do but say yes? In the seventh summer, when it's time
for her to don her pelt and go back home, the hunter changes his
mind. He refuses to return her sealskin. Her human skin begins to
dry. Her hair falls out. Her eyes grow dull and her body withers.
Limping and nearly blind, she is like one of the homeless ones from
whom we typically avert our gaze.

“ Homelessness haunts us all,” writes J. Edward Chamberlin. “One
of the reasons we walk so nervously around the homeless on our streets
is that we don't want to get too close to something we fear so deeply.”4
Or is it something we already know. Chronic depression and fatigue
are epidemic. They suggest a kind of psychic dispossession - an inner
form of homelessness. It is what happens when we go too long without
touching the life source in our 4th.

We've all experienced a sealskin theft. We've said yes to something
in the topside world. Perhaps it was a promotion that would bring
more money. Or a relationship that stole our heart. Maybe it was
a pregnancy. Sometimes it's naivete or sheer stupidity that makes
us vulnerable to psychic theft. We might have gone on an over-the-top
buying spree. Or joined a questionable religious group. But not all
our sealskin thefts are bad deals. It could be anything - even good
things - that take us away from ourselves.

There is an inevitable conflict between the needs of the soul and
the demands of public life. From the 4th we're called to serve society
in our 10th house role. Our 2nd house wants us to put food on the
table. Our children call us into the 5th. Our partners want attention
in our 7th. In the seal maiden's story, we can read the hunter as
ego. It's his job to take us into these outer worlds. But if the
hunter leads us too far from our psychic skin, we will lose sustaining
spirit. It doesn't matter how good our initial choices were.

Transits and progressions to the 4th can restore our spirit. This
includes transits to the Midheaven. We often forget that these are
also transits to the IC, so focused are we on problems of career
and public identity. But to keep our outer lives informed by soul,
we cannot neglect our psyche's foundation. To live in balance we
must stay close to our sealskins and keep a natural rhythm of going
and returning.

The sign on our 4th suggests how best to replenish ourselves. It
hints at what it feels like to have our sealskin on. Taurus on the
4th will need to ground in earthy sensuality, to be nourished by
touch, familiar habits, or the security of material things. Aquarius
on the 4th will feel restored by shaking up routines or having the
freedom to think and move without entanglements. Aries on the 4th
must periodically don the pelt of “me, me, me!”

I can forget the most important things I know.

Some months ago, past midnight, I awoke suddenly. It was dark,
I was alone. My partner had gone on a book tour. The stepkids were
with their mom. My own son was with his father. For the first time
in the two years since I moved to Oregon, I was sleeping by myself.
With a start, I remembered this was my definition of the 4th house.
Okay, I said, it's time. Inwardly, I felt for the familiar walls
of my midnight self. But it was awkward, strange. Like that uncomfortable
period of silence with an old friend that lets you both know you
don't really know each other anymore. I didn't like the silence.
I wanted to get back to sleep, read a book, turn on the TV.

“ When did you grow uncomfortable with the territory of silence?” This
is one of the questions shamans ask of patients who are depressed,
displaced, or disheartened. 3 They also ask “When did you stop
singing?” and “Why did you quit your dancing?” I
was no longer singing or dancing at home--signs that the seal skin
woman needed her pelt. There were other signs. I was suffering from
unbearable fatigue and so many food allergies I couldn't keep track
of them. My life had grown thick with entanglements, new demands
on my time, new pressures to succeed; as well, many unconscious attachments
had returned, old relationship patterns, inner messages of self worth,
an addiction to doing. And the part of my root system that used to
extend deep into reverie, wonder, and peace, the part that knew deeply
who I was and why I came here, was now withering, nearly dry. Could
I draw water into those roots again?

I don't know if what happened next was a step forward or backward
in my hero's journey. But with Sagittarius in my 4th house I needed
freedom. I moved out. I bought my own home down the street. For the
first two months I was in a state of collapse. But eventually I began
to sing again, inane impromptu tunes. I started to dance in the way
that makes my son roll his eyes and groan “M-om,” like
it's a two-syllable word. I could sit in my living room and peel
off the outer roles I'm known by, mother, lover, astrologer, daughter,
writer, sister, friend. I could dissolve my pressures, fears, the
memories of successes and failures, the ache of my desires. I could
be nothing but the one who sat there, breathing. And the world around
me grew large again. My health and love relationships improved. These
things happen when your connection to the 4th is right.

In Deborah Houlding's excellent little book on traditional house
meanings, the 4th house rulerships read like poetry: “Everything
that relates to the foundation and roots of our existence. ... It
rules hidden treasure and the treasures of the earth, such as mines
and minerals, gems, oil, wells and water supplies. ... It rules land,
the quality and nature of the ground (whether it is fertile, swampy,
woody, stony or barren), and all the buildings and structures on
it. ... It is said to indicate the beginning and end of all things,
representing childhood experiences that give rise to an unconscious
emotional experience of life, the vulnerability of old age, the process
of death, and funerals.”5

To look only at the 4th for family or real estate matters diminishes
this rich legacy, as does the contentious debate over which parent
the 4th house signifies - mother or father. The parent confusion
springs from a conflict over planetary rulers. In traditional astrology,
the Sun rules the 4th - hence, its association with fathers. Modern
astrology says the Moon rules this house - hence, its link to mothers.
But I agree with Howard Sasportas that it's impossible to fix the
4th house to either parent.6

The role each parent plays in a child's development - not planetary
rulerships - may be the safest means for locating parents in a chart.
Sasportas makes a convincing argument that we'll find the “shaping
parent”in our 10th. This is the one who had the greatest influence
on our societal development. The 4th describes the more “hidden
parent” - the one whose influence may have been less outwardly
visible, but possibly stronger at an unconscious level.

In The Astrological Houses, Dane Rudhyar sidesteps the parental
debate altogether. He acknowledges the traditional view of the 4th.
It indeed holds our earthy foundations - from the superficial facts
of real estate and home, to all that land implies - the soil from
which things grow and to which things return. But this view also
suggests an archaic “flat land” mentality. It forgets
the earth is a spinning globe, not a solid floor stretching on that
way forever. If, says Rudhyar, we instead imagine our roots descending
into a sphere, we'll reach a new and deeper meaning for the 4th.
We'll discover “the experience of center.” We'll find
the matrix of our feeling nature. To be in the 4th is to be centered
in the self. The 4th house holds the same kind of life-giving rhythmic
power as our heart.

The more one explores the depths of the 4th the less it seems like
a place one can point to on a map. It seems more like a state of
mind. This is not so different from Clarissa Pinkola Estes' definition
of home: “Home is that sustained mood or sense that allows
us to experience feelings not necessarily sustained in the mundane
world: wonder, vision, peace, freedom from worry, freedom from demands,
freedom from constant clacking.”8 In this home of the imagination,
there is room for both the Sun and Moon. This 4th house nurtures
us like a lunar mother, it sustains us like a father Sun. It invites
us to sing and dance to its shifting rhythms. It holds that castle
where we are king.

MOONPRINTS by
Dana Gerhardt

Popular
with readers of "The Mountain Astrologer" for almost
two decades, this beautiful report takes an in-depth look at
your emotional foundations. You will gain new insights into your
birth moon - its phase, sign, aspects, and house. Discover your
life purpose, hidden talents and danger zones through the moon's
nodes. Use the moon to position yourself in time - through transits
to the moon, your progressed moon sign and house, dates for two
progressed lunation cycles, plus a year of new and full moons
around your chart. You'll want to read every page of this report,
designed to please both beginners and advanced students of astrology.

As one of the largest astrology portals WWW.ASTRO.COM offers a lot of free features on the subject. With high-quality horoscope interpretations by the world's leading astrologers Liz Greene, Robert Hand and other authors, many free horoscopes and extensive information on astrology for beginners and professionals, www.astro.com is the first address for astrology on the web.